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Kaspars Groshevs
from Latvia
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Interview: 10 questions
1. Tell me something about your life and the educational background
I come from Riga, Latvia. In my childhood it was a part of USSR, when the Chernobil exploded my mom told me not to go play outside. So I did.
At the moment I study in Art Academy of Latvia, Visual Communication department which is a great place for creative activities as it supports largely students who are willing to work. Before that I finished art highschool/college which specializes in painting and classical art, hovever that was where I got in touch with new medias.
This year I spent one semester in Strasbourg’s art deco school (ESAD) and took part in several interesting sound improvisation projects, which is also what I do sometimes. However painting and moving images are my prefered areas to work in.
2. When, how and why started you filming?
As I said in my art highschool, but I soon realized that filming isn’t my thing as I couldn’t bear the ugly quality of middle class cameras and the lack of good lights. Next step was to try making movie with photocamera, drawings, scans etc, which gave me different and maybe more interesting visual qualities.
3.What kind of subjects have your films?
The first couple films I made where more poetic videos, using text and peoples in abstract spaces, lost industrial areas unable to communicate. After I tried more intuitive and surreal approach, using signs and symbols with many possible meanings. Currently I am trying to combine both text and more spontanious form.
4. How do you develop your films, do you follow certain principles, styles etc?
With more artistic films I try also to experiment in this thing – not always good idea, but I dont like rules when I want a process to be more interesting for me. For example my film “Dots” started as a spontanious game just with colors and taking shots with camera. For “Tomorrow” I had a story in my mind which defined the further process.
The only exeption was a 20 minutes long comissioned computer animation which took over 9 months to make together with my friend Evita Vasiljeva. For that we had a clear plan of developing the whole thing – starting with idea and building it slowly one by one.
5. Tell me something about the technical equipment you use.
For these 2 works I submitted: Sony digital photocamera, laptop (Aftereffects or Final Cut for editing) and lots of colors, pens, pencils and markers.
6. What are the chances of new media for the genre film/video in general and you personally?
I dont know. Probably as long as someone will want to experiment and make something interesting for themselves and others, there will be new medias involved.
7. How do you finance your films?
As you can see, there is not really that much to finance. But of course – I have to work for money sometimes to be able to do this kind of activities.
8.Do you work individually as a video artist/film maker or do you work in a team? if you have experience in both, what is the difference, what do you prefer?
So far I have worked individually which is nice for small artistic free projects. But the only time I worked with other person for a bigger project, I realised that even two can be not enough sometimes. I’m willing to try out working in bigger team where each is responsible for more specific things.
9. Who or what has a lasting influence on your film/video making?
David Lynch, Jan Svankmajer, Matisse.
10. What are your future plans or dreams as a film/video maker?
Try out combining all the things I’ve done so far in something new, and than add the new one to the previous and do it again and again and again and again.
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MY WORKS ONLINE:
TOMORROW:
http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&VideoID=14043302
DOTS:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NlTGR3nUEJ4